On the 11th November, I was again
a little early, and so photographed the column that I thought would be the first
to be removed that day.

However, I was wrong. The first
column to be removed today was a new one - it had only been put in on the 9th!
The reason for this was that apparently an underground telephone cable had been
damaged when the column was installed, and BT wanted the hole to be dug out, in
order
that the problem could be located. As you can imagine, the HIAB guys were
really happy to oblige!

The hole was dug out, and the
offending cable was quickly located. No visible damage could be seen, but the BT
repairman wanted the column to be completely removed from the hole, in order
that he could have a closer look. Tempers were rising...

The repairman couldn't find a
visible fault either, but he said that the cable did look as if it had been
stretched, and wanted the hole to be extended to see if any damage could be seen
further up. This again revealed no breaks, and so the only possible reason for
local residents having a dead phone line was that the cable had been internally
damaged when the ground was disturbed. What probably happened is that, when the
new service was fitted, the electricity board mistook the telephone line for the
main service cable and shook it to try to pull it out of the ground, before
they realised that they'd picked the wrong cable. Anyway, the repairman put a
joint in, with a longer piece of cable, and the phones started working again.

Once the repairman gave the
all-clear, the hole for the column was re-dug, then the column was lowered back
in, and the service cable was re-fitted.

However, just then, someone came
out of a nearby house and said that their telephone wasn't working, so all work
had to stop again, in case the column had to be lifted out again. While we
waited for the BT repairman to come back, the person came out again and told us
that the phone now seemed to be working, but even so, the column was left raised
up, to save having to dig it out yet again! It was unlikely that any more than
two columns would be changed today, as no work could continue until the BT man
returned, so I decided to head off.

I returned after nightfall, and
luckily, this column had been reinstated and was working. One column had been
replaced - not the one pictured at the top of the page, but the one on the other
side of the road, right by the telegraph pole. I bet that was a difficult one to
change!

There is less than one metre
between the column and the pole. As you can see, one of them isn't vertical -
and it isn't the column!

No work took place on the 12th
November, so the next few columns will probably be changed on the 15th.

Links to the other Station Rd pages:

Photographs of the replacements:

Other information about or
involving the
Station Rd replacement scheme: